The state budget is halfway through the state legislature. But it may not get too much further in its current form. The budget came out of a House committee last week, and it looked different than Gov. John Kasich’s original budget did. It had a 6.3% income tax cut, down from Kasich’s proposed 23% cut. And it had none of the major tax increases that Kasich had proposed to pay for his tax cut – the increases in sales tax and the commercial activity tax or CAT, and the hikes in taxes on tobacco and fracking. On the House floor for the final vote, Finance Committee Chairman Ryan Smith (R-Bidwell) defended the budget as a spending plan that builds on the economic strides that Ohio has made in recent years. But Democrats including Denise Driehaus (D-Cincinnati) and Nicholas Celebrezze (D-Parma) spoke out against it. Speaker Pro Tem Ron Amstutz (R-Wooster) hinted that the concerns about the budget by Tea Party and conservative Republicans in his final pitch before the vote. But Gov. Kasich wasn’t pleased with what he saw from his fellow Republicans in the House.
There are basically two main topics here on Capitol Square since lawmakers returned from spring break, and they both involve the next two years – the biennial state budget and the Republican primary for president in 2016. And obviously, Gov. John Kasich is front and center in both of these discussions. Talking about all that are two experts in Ohio and national politics. David Niven is a professor of political science at the University of Cincinnati. And John Green is the director of the Bliss Institute for Applied Politics at the University of Akron.